2023-04-23 00:49:26
The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, confirmed this Thursday that the exhumation of the remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera announced for this Monday, April 24, will be “one more step in the redefinition of the Valley of the Fallen, because no person will have a preeminent place.” It is, he added, “one more step” so that “no homage is paid, no person is praised, no ideology that evokes the dictatorship.”
The date has been chosen by the Government, which thus complies with the family’s request to proceed with the transfer of the remains of the founder of the Falange to a religious cemetery after the entry into force of the Democratic Memory Law last October . His destination will be the San Isidro cemetery, following the will expressed by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in his will, where he asked to be buried “in holy ground and under the protection of the Holy Cross.”
The family already anticipated in October its will that the exhumation of the remains of Primo de Rivera not be carried out in the same way as that of the remains of Franco in 2019.
It was precisely the Spanish leader who made the decision that Primo de Rivera was buried in the Valley of the Fallen. This was expressed to the family in a letter dated March 7, 1959, which was answered by the brothers of the founder of the Falange, Miguel and Pilar Primo de Rivera, on March 11. Two historical documents that become relevant again with the exhumation of his remains, to which ABC had exclusive access and which it published that same year on its cover.
five exhumations
This, however, will not be the first time that the remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera have been exhumed, but rather the fifth. After his execution at 6.20 in the morning on November 20, 1936 in the courtyard of the Alicante prison, the body of the founder of the Falange was thrown into a common grave from which he was exhumed two years later, to be buried in the Niche number 515 of the Nuestra Señora de los Remedios cemetery in the same city.
At the end of the Civil War, however, the Falangists demanded the highest honor for their leader and that his remains be transferred to the Monastery of El Escorial in front of the main altar. At that time, Franco was highly supported by said organization on the advice of his brother-in-law and minister Ramón Serrano Suñer and the dictator accepted. They remained there until 1959, when the works on the minor basilica of Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos were completed. The Falangists then asked that his remains be transferred to bury them before the main altar.
It was at that time that Franco maintained the aforementioned private correspondence with the family of Primo de Rivera to ask their permission. In that first letter, which ABC published on the 21st of 1959, the head of state explained to the deceased’s brothers the reasons why he had made the decision, still not knowing that he would share space with him 16 years later.
Franco’s letter to the Primo de Rivera family in 1959
“Raised to welcome heroes”
«Dear Pilar and Miguel: Once the great Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen has been completed, built to house the heroes and martyrs of our crusade, it is offered to us as the most appropriate place for the remains of your brother José Anboriio to be buried in, in the preferential place that corresponds to him among our glorious fallen. Although his outstanding and transcendent figure already belongs to history and the movement, to which he gave himself so generously, and his two brothers being his closest relatives, it is natural that you be the ones who give your consent for the transfer of the remains, which will rest there, in the same form and disposition that until today they have had in the Monastery of El Escorial. This is the purpose of this letter, since the first day of April, designated for the inauguration of the monument, is approaching. With this reason, your friend remembers you very affectionately».
Pilar Primo de Rivera was not only the sister of José Antonio, but also the founder of the Falange Women’s Section and the woman whom Ernesto Giménez Caballero – Spanish fascism theorist, professor, poet, writer and ambassador of Spain in the era of Franco – tried to marry Hitler. A plan for which she even came to travel to Nazi Germany and meet with the closest circle of the genocide before and after the start of World War II. Miguel, for his part, was prosecuted in the same trial in which his brother José Antonio was sentenced to death for supporting Franco’s rebellion. He, however, to thirty years in jail and his wife, to six.
The origin of the trial must be found on March 14, four months before the Civil War broke out, when José Antonio was already a deputy for the conservative monarchist coalition. That day, the founder of the Falange, his brother Miguel, and other Falangists were arrested for having ignored the ban on using a center that, according to what the press explained, had been closed two weeks before, when they discovered inside “some forgotten pistol, some charger and some club. That is, for illegal possession of weapons.
Response of Miguel and Pilar Primo de Rivera to Franco in 1959
Imprisonment
José Antonio and Miguel were locked up in the offices of the General Security Directorate to be interrogated and, shortly after, sent to a cell in the Modelo prison in Madrid. From there, at dawn from June 5 to 6, they were transferred to the Alicante prison for fear that they would escape. The coup d’état took place in their new destination, which is why they were tried a second time for conspiracy and military rebellion, being sentenced to the aforementioned capital punishment and thirty years in prison, respectively, which were abolished at the end of the war.
Both brothers responded to said letter four days later, on March 11, 1959, with the following words:
«Our respected general: Both Pilar and I appreciate your letter in all its value, which shows us to what extent you have a sincere and deep affection and respect for the person and work of our brother José Antonio. Built, as you say, the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen to welcome the heroes and martyrs of our crusade, it seems fair to us and we are honored by your design to deposit the mortal remains of our brother there. We also believe that this is how we interpret José Antonio’s desire to rest with his comrades and that this is the same feeling of the Falange, which under the leadership of Your Excellency continues to be so loyal to his memory and to his idea. We would like the transfer from the Monastery of El Escorial to the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen to have, as much as possible, an intimate and collected character, as is being carried out for all those who, from now on, have to accompany him and share suffrages with him. and honors. Your Excellency receives the respectful affection of Miguel and Pilar Primo de Rivera».
The “affection and respect” and affection to which the brothers of the founder of the Falange referred, however, has been questioned, even by some people around the dictator. For example, his Foreign Minister, Ramón Serrano Suñer, who wrote in his memoirs: «Regarding José Antonio, it will not be a great surprise to say, for the well-informed, that Franco did not like him. There was reciprocity in it, since José Antonio did not feel respect for Franco either and more than once I had felt mortified, as a friend of both, by the nature of his criticism. There, in Salamanca, I had to suffer the counterpart. Franco was mortified by the cult of José Antonio, the aura of his intelligence and his courage ».
In addition, in 1957 there was a drastic ministerial change in which Franco removed the Falangists from his government, putting in their place the technocrats, who took control of the economy. Even so, Franco went ahead with the transfer, although Franco put a condition: that the transport be carried out in a funeral van. The Falange refused and imposed that it be carried on their shoulders, as had happened in the 1939 march. Thus, on March 30, 1959, two days before the monument was inaugurated, members of the Old Guard of said party they carried the coffin in turns during the four hours it took to make the journey.
Franco, despite the ‘loving’ letters sent to Miguel and Pilar Primo de Rivera, was not present for fear that José Antonio’s supporters would boo him.
#forgotten #letters #Franco #expressed #wishes #remains #Primo #Rivera